I PERI N’TERA

I Peri N’Tera is an ongoing, multi-media project that challenges the visual culture and political rhetoric used to represent and address the migrant/refugee crisis in Europe. The project started in Sicily, Italy in May 2015 in response to the British media’s coverage of two migrant vessels that capsized in the Mediterranean Sea in April 2015 claiming an estimated 1,000 lives. Adjectives such as “cockroaches” were used to describe those onboard, and those that attempt these journeys to Europe. This calibre of language and media/political spin have lead to the geo-political landscape of Europe being altered in a preoccupying way. Conservative and nationalistic political growth intensifies the difficulty of being able to provide the general public with a well considered analysis of a situation that is shamefully cloaked in human rights abuses and death.

Since 2017, the work examines the effect of migration on a group of teenage unaccompanied minors arriving to a small, rural reception centre in central Sicily and presents a mosaic of individual narratives. The boys were each rescued in the Mediterranean Sea and arrived to Europe alone, without parents and formed a makeshift family unit until adulthood and subsequent bureaucratic relocation to other remote regions of Sicily took place. The work is defined by collaboration; contributing a more realistic and personal representation for the individuals living through these systems. It focusses on the psychological impact of their individual journeys and makes clear the effect of PTSD resulting from multiple incidents of trauma including witnessing extreme violence, kidnap and slavery. Despite ambitions to work and provide for their families back home, their reality often consists of ghettoisation, xenophobia, unemployment or exploitative labour and a long and difficult process to receive documentation.